Heinrich Marx

Heinrich Marx (born Herschel HaLevi Marx, ; 15 April 1777 – 10 May 1838) was a German lawyer who was the father of the communist philosopher Karl Marx, as well as seven other children, including Louise Juta.

Life Heinrich Marx was born in Saarlouis into an Ashkenazi Jewish family with the name Herschel Levi, the son of Rabbi Marx Levi Mordechai ben Samuel HaLevi of Rödelheim (1743–1804) and Eva Lwow (1753–1823). Heinrich Marx's father was the rabbi of Trier, a role which his older brother, the Rabbi Samuel Marx von Trier, would later assume. An 1812 edict, unenforced by the French, asserted that Jews could not occupy legal positions or state offices, and Prussian enforcement of the law led to trouble for Heinrich Marx. His wife and children were baptized in 1825 and 1824 respectively. In 1815 Heinrich Marx began work as a lawyer, in 1819 moving his family to a ten-room property near the Roman Porta Nigra archway. His wife, Henriette Pressburg (1788–1863), belonged to a prosperous Jewish business family from Nijmegen in the Netherlands. Henriette's sister Sophie Pressburg (1797–1854), Karl Marx's aunt, married Lion Philips (1794–1866), a wealthy Dutch tobacco manufacturer and industrialist, upon whom Karl and Jenny Marx would later often come to rely for loans while they were exiled in London. Sophie was the grandmother of Anton and Gerard Philips who later founded the Philips Electronics company.

Isaiah Berlin writes of Heinrich Marx that he believed that man is by nature both good and rational, and that all that is needed to ensure triumph of these qualities is the removal of artificial obstacles from his path. They were disappearing already, and disappearing fast, and the time was rapidly approaching when the last citadels of reaction, the Catholic Church and the feudal nobility, would melt away before the irresistible march of reason...

Born a Jew, a citizen of inferior legal and social status, he had attained to equality with his more enlightened neighbours, had earned their respect as a human being, and had become assimilated into what appeared to him as their more rational and dignified mode of life.

Heinrich Marx became a passionate Prussian patriot and monarchist who educated his family as liberal Lutheran Christians. He died of tuberculosis at age 61 and was buried in the Protestant cemetery in Trier.

Relationship with Karl Marx Heinrich had his son educated at home until the age of twelve. After graduating from the Trier Gymnasium, Karl enrolled in the Rhenish Friedrich Wilhelm University of Bonn in 1835 at the age of seventeen; he wished to study philosophy and literature, but his father insisted on law as a more practical field of study. At Bonn, Karl joined the Trier Tavern Club drinking society (Landsmannschaft der Treveraner) and at one point served as its president. Because of Marx's poor grades, his father forced him to transfer to the far more serious and academically oriented Friedrich-Wilhelm University in Berlin, where his legal studies became less significant than excursions into philosophy and history.

Even after Karl's move to Berlin, his parents remained concerned with his lifestyle and extravagance. After receiving a letter from Karl in November 1837, his father responded in critical fashion: Alas, your conduct has consisted merely in disorder, meandering in all the fields of knowledge, musty traditions by sombre lamplight; degeneration in a learned dressing gown with uncombed hair has replaced degeneration with a beer glass. And a shirking unsociability and a refusal of all conventions and even all respect for your father. Your intercourse with the world is limited to your sordid room, where perhaps lie abandoned in the classical disorder the love letters of a Jenny [Karl’s fiancée] and the tear-stained counsels of your father. ... And do you think that here in this workshop of senseless and aimless learning you can ripen the fruits to bring you and your loved one happiness? ... . As though we were made of gold my gentleman son disposes of almost 700 thalers in a single year, in contravention of every agreement and every usage, whereas the richest spend no more than 500.

However, in spite of their disagreements, Karl always retained a strong affection for his father, his daughter Eleanor writing “he never tired of talking about him, and always carried an old daguerreotype photograph of him”. On Karl's death, Engels laid the photograph in his coffin.

Ancestry

Works Einige Bemerkungen über das napoleonische Dekret vom 17. März 1808 bei Gelegenheit der glücklichen Vereinigung unseres Landes mit der königlich-preußischen Monarchie (gedruckt in Adolf Kober: Karl Marx' Vater und das napoleonische Ausnahmegesetz gegen die Juden 1808 Ueber den Werth der Handelsgerichte in den Königl. Preußischen Rheinprovinzen; In: Niederrheinisches Archiv für Gesetzgebung, Rechtswissenschaft und Justiz-Verwaltung; I. Bd., Köln 1817, p. 7 ff. (Digisat Archiv für Sozialgeschichte Bd.8, 1968, p. 277 ff. online) Festrede zu Ehren der Landtagsdeputierten vom 13. Januar 1834; gedruckt bei Heinz Monz: Karl Marx - Grundlagen der Entwicklung zu Leben und Werk; Trier 1973, p. 134 Aus finsteren Zeiten. In: Neue Welt. Beilage Vorwärts Berlin 19. Jg. 1894, Nr. 18 and 19